'Nine Lives' creates a rich tapestry of humanity

By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, October 27, 2005

Rodrigo Garcia may be the closest thing we have to a master short-story artist working on the big screen. In "Nine Lives," the writer/director (son of Gabriel Garcia Marquez) carves out defining moments in the lives of nine women and creates a lovely whole from the fragments that, at first glance, don't piece together in any conventional way.

The characters are diverse: a rage-filled Latino woman (Elpidia Carrillo) struggling to stay on good behavior in an L.A. County prison; a married woman (Robin Wright Penn) shaken by a chance encounter with an old lover; the teenage daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of parents who only converse through her; a miserable middle-age wife and mother (a heartbreakingly fragile Sissy Spacek) in an affair with a charming younger man.

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Each story is shot in a single, graceful long take, carving it out as a contained slice of their life. Yet characters drift across the vignettes, creating not so much dramatic connections as a sense that these lives co-exist and touch, however briefly or tangentially.

And his dialogue has a slightly rarefied quality; introspective with a bruised feel and a literary beauty ("We're nothing. We're dreams and bones."). This beautifully sculpted poetic naturalism has more in common with the expressive use of words in the great screenplays of '40s and '50s than with modern movies.

Garcia is fascinated by the inner lives of women and his compassion and empathy bring them alive in these vignettes, these brief but intimate character sketches in a 12-minute or so span of life. Even in their most troubled, vulnerable, panicked moments, he reveals grace and beauty and honesty and raw humanity, perhaps especially in those moments of duress.

But the stories also take the audience on a journey, from rage and anger to connection and peace, a life cycle told through the moments of time from nine women who have nothing in common but their struggles, their search for happiness and their connection to the tapestry of humanity.